It took 30 years since Kergan was reported missing for a jury to weigh in on the case and return a verdict that left members of Kergan's family in tears and with smiles on their faces.

Once handed the case, the jury deliberated for approximately a half hour before returning to the courtroom, where they delivered a unanimous guilty verdict. A conviction required guilty votes from 10 out the 12 jurors.

According to the prosecution's case, Kergan was targeted by witness Leila Mulla and defendant Ronald Dunnagan -- a former prostitute Kergan had slept with a number of times before and her boyfriend who acted as her pimp, respectively. Mulla, the then 19-year-old prostitute and exotic dancer, testified Thursday (Sept. 10) that defendant Dunnagan came up with the plan to rob and kill Kergan for money.

The plan played out, said Mulla, now 50, in the early morning hours of Nov. 29, 1984.

Mulla, who pleaded guilty in May 2014 to a manslaughter charge in Kergan's death and is currently serving a 30-year-sentence, said the killing started with the poising of Kergan at the Baton Rouge apartment she shared with Dunnagan.

She had met Kergan, who they called "Sonic Gary," at the strip club where she worked. He had paid her for sex a number of times before, she testified, when he was in town on business. He wore jewelry and carried large amounts of cash, which East Baton Rouge Parish Assistant District Attorney Dana Cummings indicated made him a target.

Mulla testified that after Kergan fell on the bedroom floor coughing, Dunnagan came out fo the closet where he was hiding and put a pillow over his head until he stopped breathing or moving. She said he then dragged Kergan's body into the bathroom and dismembered him. They bagged his remains and evidence from the apartment and threw them away in two different dumpsters in Baton Rouge. Kergan's body was never found, and Mulla said Thursday should could not remember where the dumpsters were located.

The couple left Baton Rouge for Las Vegas days after the murder, Mulla testified, and both were soon arrested. Mulla was the last to be seen with Kergan alive, and a warrant had been issued when he was reported missing. The owner of the strip club was friends with Kergan, testified Wednesday (Sept. 9) about seeing them together and attended the trial all this week.

Ted Kergan talks about verdict in trial over brother's deathTed Kergan, left, speaks to reporters outside the state district courthouse in downtown Baton Rouge after a jury delivered a guilty verdict to one of the people involved in his brother Gary Kergan's 1984 death. Standing at Ted's left is Wade Kergan, the victim's son who was 9-years-old when his father disappeared.

The decades-old case resurfaced in 2012 when cold case detectives with Baton Rouge Police Department tested blood found in the trunk of Kergan's Cadillac, which was found abandoned in a Metairie parking lot the day he disappeared, for DNA. Mulla testified that Dunnagan drove the car to a parking lot with her in the passenger seat the morning of the murder, and they took a cab back to Baton Rouge.

DNA tested from the car made a parent-offspring match with Kergan's son, Wade Kergan. While police and prosecutors didn't have a body, the blood evidence was enough to arrest the pair in 2012. They found Mulla working as a registered nurse in Queens New York and Dunnagan living on disability in Bossier City.

It wasn't until 2014, when Mulla confessed and agreed to testify, though, that Dunnagan was formally charged by a grand jury.

Wade said Friday outside the courtroom that his father disappeared the weekend of his 10th birthday. Now 41 and dressed in a suit, tears fell on his cheek in the hallway as he hugged his uncle Ted Kergan, who has pushed for the prosecution of his brother's killers for 30 years.

There's seven files on a table in his house, Ted said outside the courthouse. Every day he would flip through, wondering what he might have missed.

Baton Rouge state District Judge Mike Erwin asked the courtroom not to create any "commotion," when the verdict was read.

No one cheered or spoke when the clerk, after listing the charge, said, "guilty." But the already-clasped hands of Wade and Ted squeezed tight, and Wade's shook.

Dunnagan, who stood no taller than 5-foot-4 inches with rounded, crouched shoulders and a long, white beard, resumed the stone-faced expression he held throughout most of the trial when the verdict was read.

His attorney Susan Henry Hebert, the public defender appointed to the case, said outside the courtroom after the verdict was read that her team tried their best. "It's very difficult," she said, "with (a case) this old."

They will appeal the sentence Erwin delivers at a sentencing hearing scheduled for Oct. 7, Hebert said.

Wade said he has no hope or expectation of how Dunnagan will process his conviction or incarceration, adding that he doubt Dunnagan has a capacity to feel remorse.

"I think he's a sociopath," he said of Dunnagan. "And not a very bright one, either."

Wade mostly feels relief, he said. "I'm glad it's over."

Ted allowed himself to imagine how it would feel to receive a guilty verdict, he said, and he found the reality to be better than he expected. "I'm ecstatic," he said.

"I thought it was gong to be real surreal. But it's not. It's really real."

Both Wade and Ted noted their gratitude for the Baton Rouge police and D.A.'s office for following through with every step they indicated they would make in the case.

Ted's wife, Ann Kergan, said her husband's "dedication and tenacity" in his pursuit of justice for his brother, even 30 years later, helped result in Friday's verdict.

"I think it's great for kids in this generation to know that no matter how much time passes," she said, "the truth prevails."